Thursday, April 26, 2012

In her latest Slate piece, Amanda Marcotte attempts to attack Lila Rose and Live Action's possible Planned Parenthood sting by arguing that sex-selection abortions aren't an issue in the United States.

Does she examine any of the relevant data which shows an imbalance in the sex ratios in Asian families with second and third children when the first child is a girl?

Nope. That would require actual junior high level research. And effort.

No, instead she uses elementary school level reasoning.

Last time, she was trying to prove that Planned Parenthood is involved in sex trafficking. Now she's trying to accuse them of fueling a social problem that doesn't even exist: sex-selective abortion. Even though Rose hasn't released any of her no doubt misleadingly edited videos, the presence of women in Planned Parenthood clinics claiming that they wanted abortions only if their fetuses were female tipped the organization off that there's another sting afoot. Marinate on that for a moment, if you're eager to believe that Planned Parenthood is part of some nationwide anti-girl conspiracy. If they were routinely---or even occasionally---handing out sex-selective abortions, they wouldn't figure out so quickly that they were being targeted by a sting. The only reason the sting operation is sticking out is because sex-selective abortions aren't actually a thing that people are doing, not in the U.S. And certainly not through Planned Parenthood.

So Marcotte's "reasoning" is that sex-selection abortions can't be happening even occasionally in the U.S. because one abortion provider, which has been harmed by previous undercover stings, believes they may have been visited by another undercover sting involving people pretending to want a sex-selection abortion.

Marcotte never seems to think that maybe after the rather large sex trafficking dust-up, Planned Parenthood may have implemented different reporting systems which encourage employees to share with their supervisors any patients who could have controversial requests and then these supervisors examine the requests for a pattern.

Marcotte also never seems to understand that the vast majority of women having sex selection abortions probably aren't bringing it up with their abortion provider voluntarily.

Mr. Nadler did make one concession at the committee meeting. "On the other hand," he said, "an 8-month-old fetus or a 9-month-old fetus, in my opinion, is a human being." Some concession. Can we not in 2012 call even a nearly born infant a human being as a matter of fact rather than opinion?

Canada's "consensus" on our unlimited abortion licence — any time, for any reason, fully funded by tax dollars — is a strange one. First of all, it's not really a consensus, as only a minority of Canadians, when polled, support the extreme position we currently have.

Yet the faux-consensus is apparently so essential that any attempt to moderate Canada's abortion enthusiasm is thought to be unpatriotic, as if adopting, say, French or German abortion policies would be to accede to the most retrograde social policies imaginable. At the same time, the faux-consensus is so fragile that every attempt must be made to prevent any discussion about it.

In Pennsylvania's 134th House district, they spent an eye-popping $100,000 on a TV ad campaign trying to sink the candidacy of Republican Ryan Mackenzie by linking him to ultrasound legislation that was before the legislature.....

That trial balloon popped when MacKenzie cruised to victory by an 18-point margin, 59 percent to 41 percent.

In a transparent attempt to keep her problem-ridden Alabama abortion clinic afloat, Southern state abortion clinic magnate Diane Derzis is trying to pull a Steven Brigham. She's trying to hand over ownership of her abortion clinic to someone who either rents from her or lives with her. Prolife groups have noted the fishy business.

Ochata Management LLC filed an application for a license to run the clinic on March 30, according to state records released at the request of The Birmingham News. Ochata was formed on March 21, according to records in the office of the Alabama Secretary of State.

Several anti-abortion organizations on Tuesday sent regulators a letter alleging that Ochata's administrator and the clinic's current owner, Diane Derzis, have a relationship that should bar the company from taking over the clinic. Under the terms of a consent decree any new operator "must be independent from and not affiliated with New Woman or its officers and directors."
......
According to Ochata Management's license application, Ochata is located in a 16th Street South building. According to Jefferson County tax records, Derzis owns a building with the same street address. According to other public records, Rain-Water lives at the same address.

Every so often several friends and I debate the merits of "outing" certain organizations for their legendary (expletive). Everyone knows that organization A has an executive director who's a megalomanic. Everyone knows that two particular organizations bully other smaller organizations. Everyone knows that organization B likes to fire (almost) everyone every couple of years. Everyone knows that certain national organizations have less than cordial relationships with their local affiliates. Is there merit in pinning a name to these claims? What would happen to the person who decided to to do so? Would she be ex-communicated from the movement? Lose the ability to work or volunteer in the movement ever again?

Maybe my friends and I are just bitter (former) employees. But we also believe that our movement can and should be better than this. Is this bait for antis? Everything is bait for antis.

Herold then goes on the list a myriad of issues she and others have seen as problematic while working for abortion providers and pro-choice organizations. While some of them could be typical of any work place, others point to a large amount of hypocrisy in leading pro-choice organizations.

You don’t get insurance coverage. The insurance coverage you get doesn’t cover pre-natal care, contraception, or abortion. You don’t get decent maternity or paternity leave. Yet these are all values your organization supposedly champions......

Your organization only cares about marginalized people in a marginalized place (hello, low-income Texan women!) when your org stands to make a buck off of promoting their rough situation.

You can imagine my excitement when over the course of a few months, I landed interviews at many of the big pro-choice organizations here. I don't have to name them. You know who they are. I interviewed for jobs at these places that fit my experience, jobs at which I could've kicked ass. But each interview ended with some version of this: "I'm sorry, but you are too radical/too much of an activist to work for us."
At one particular organization, a senior executive looked me in the eye and said, "If you work here, you have no voice on reproductive rights."
Another organization wanted me to delete my twitter account. Some wanted me to stop blogging. Others said that because I have a published opinion on later abortion, I would be a liability. One wanted me to resign from all my volunteer pro-choice activism, namely being on the board of the New York Abortion Access Fund.
These requests were not implied. They were said to me in no uncertain terms.

She was eventually hired by the Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health and is now working at Columbia University.

Any guesses to who the supposed megalomaniac is? Cecile Richards, perhaps?

What is it that is so precious about milk that it should be respected, but a fetus is something we can dispose of? What is it that is so sacred about cheese, but is nonexistent when it comes to the value of a human life? I simply do not get it. When the primary guiding philosophy behind your diet is a respect for life, it seems perverse to put human beings at the bottom of the food chain.

We can disagree about the law.
We can disagree about the science.
We can even disagree about the politics of reproductive autonomy.
What we can't do, though, is delude ourselves into believing that it takes more courage to destroy a growing fetus than it does to allow that child to be born. We can't pretend that it is more selfless to use abortion as birth control than it is to give birth and then gift that child to loving, adoptive parents.

The California Nurses Association is opposing legislation to make it legal in California for nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physicians assistants to perform abortions. There is currently a study in California at UC San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health where 41 non-doctors are being trained to perform aspiration abortions.

Jane at the Abortion Monologues provides a great example of how some pro-choicers in Canada are almost completely unable to debate abortion. When a call for a government committee to study when human life begins leads to such a mindless, angry, unpersuasive and unreasonable monologue it makes you wonder if someone like Jane really knows that the unborn are human beings but cares too much about abortion to let that inconvenient fact get in the way.

"Rose Health Services' failure to have a physician on-site to perform abortion services and notify the department accordingly in a timely fashion is a violation of the law," said Christine Cronkright, Health Department director of communications. "The Pennsylvania Department of Health stands by its actions in the April 17 letter and order revoking the registration."

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Planned Parenthood has notified some of its friends in the media that they suspect Live Action actors recently posed as women looking to get sex-selection abortion and their clinics in a variety of states. Planned Parenthood is trying to get out ahead of this one.

A string of suspicious incidents at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country has given the organization reason to believe that anti-abortion activists are targeting it in a new organized sting operation.
According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Chloe Cooney, clinics in at least 11 states have reported two dozen or more "hoax visits" over the past several weeks, in which a woman walks into a clinic, claims to be pregnant and asks a particular pattern of provocative questions about sex-selective abortions, such as how soon she can find out the gender of the fetus, by what means and whether she can schedule an abortion if she's having a girl.....
While Planned Parenthood condemns seeking abortions on the basis of the gender of the fetus, Cooney said the provider is also "committed to providing high-quality, confidential, nonjudgmental care to all who come into our health centers." While Planned Parenthood staffers are extensively trained to answer unusual and difficult questions and to refer women to necessary counseling, none of its clinics will deny a woman an abortion based on her reasons for wanting one, except in those states that explicitly prohibit sex-selection abortion (Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Illinois).

Since Live Action often points out how Planned Parenthood clinic flout the law, I wouldn't be surprised to see videos from some of those states where sex-selection abortion is illegal.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Washington Examiner reports that the vast majority of abortion clinics in Virginia will comply with the state's recent law abortion clinic regulation law.

Twenty of the 23 facilities affected by the new rules have already informed the state that they meet those new standards or would make the necessary changes to comply, according to license applications The Washington Examiner obtained through an open-records request.
Of the other three that didn't apply for a license, one already stopped providing abortions and two others didn't have to meet the new standards because they plan to perform fewer than five first-trimester abortions a month.

When the regulations were being considered, abortion advocates continuallyclaimed the regulations would force numerous clinics to close. Abortion advocates are now claiming it will cost between $150,000 to $3 million to meet the regulations.

The BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Victoria Derbyshire will host an edition of her show from an as yet unnamed clinic next month and carry out interviews with women who are undergoing pregnancy terminations, as well as doctors, counsellors and junior members of the clinic's staff. After a period of negotiation the clinic has consented to the programme and is likely to be identified.

Planned Parenthood has stopped distributing RU-486 abortion pills in Wisconsin because of a new law.

It mandates that women having nonsurgical abortions visit the same doctor three times and that doctors ensure the woman is having the procedure voluntarily and without coercion. Failure to follow those requirements could result in felony charges against the doctor.....
Planned Parenthood president and chief executive officer Teri Huyck said because of confusion over the new law, nonsurgical abortions are being suspended. Planned Parenthood will continue to provide surgical abortions at its clinics in Madison, Milwaukee and the Appleton area, its leaders said.
"The added risks of felony penalties for physicians who provide medication abortion are unnecessary and intended to threaten a physician's ability to provide women with medication abortion,'' Huyck said.

Or maybe it's just not cost-effective for the abortionist to see a woman three times.

Bhatt had already filed a police case against her husband and in-laws for harassment. But in order to expose this practice Bhatt filed RTI applications with the health officers of two districts seeking details about her abortion case and other such cases. The explosive information exposed a nefarious nexus between gynecologists and sonography clinics involved in illegal abortion and sex determination tests. Bhatt found that her name did not figure in the elaborate list of patients who had undergone sonography tests.
"This meant that the government had no information on the tests conducted on me, as mandated under the PCPNDT Act. There may have been many such women like me. The doctors were maintaining a secret list of patients on which sex determination tests were being conducted," says Bhatt.
Due to Bhatt's expose, licences of two doctors' were cancelled for malpractice and the state government reviewed the requirements for doctors to submit their monthly reports.

Publicly, Planned Parenthood leaders say the merger, which has been under discussion since 2009, is about creating a leaner, more efficient organization, especially in the face of reductions in state and federal financing. Less brazenly, they suggest that joining forces is the best way to defend their branches from an onslaught of anti-abortion legislation — and to connect the fundraising powerhouses concentrated in North Texas with endangered clinics throughout the 58,000-square-mile region and beyond.
"For us, it's a strategic merger, an opportunity to pull together three very strong operations into one," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the Waco-born daughter of the late Gov. Ann Richards. "It will help on the advocacy side and, more important, on the health care delivery side."

Also in Texas, a judge has heard arguments over legislation to remove Planned Parenthood from the state women's health program.

But lawyers for the state said Planned Parenthood's mission was contrary to a Texas Women's Health Program goal of reducing abortions. The program provides cancer screenings, birth control and other health services to more than 100,000 low-income women.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel did not rule on Planned Parenthood's request but said he planned to do so by April 30.
"I find this to be a difficult case," he said after lawyers for both sides made their arguments.

Pennsylvania has revoked the registration of one of Stephen Brigham's abortion clinics which has been shuttered because its abortionist resigned.

The letter acknowledges the clinic voluntarily closed, but the newspaper says regulators noted the clinic failed to notify the state that its doctor resigned creating an "infrastructure failure" that prompted the letter revoking the clinic's registration.

By all accounts, Annie Clark, 7, a first-grader at Wilson Christian
Academy in West Mifflin, is a hard-working and determined student who
makes a point of learning from her mistakes and strives for perfection
in her work.

So on the surface, it should come as no surprise that
she won a national handwriting award from the Zaner-Bloser language
arts and reading company. That is, of course, if you didn't know that
she was born with no hands.

On Wednesday, Annie received one of
two national handwriting awards the Zaner-Bloser firm offered for the
first time this year to disabled students. The other went to a student
in Eastlake, Ohio, who has a visual impairment.

Annie's can-do attitude may come from her family of eight siblings. The Clarks have three biological children, Amanda, 29, Amy, 25 and Abbey, 21. Abbey was born with Down syndrome, and the Clarks said their experiences with her opened their eyes to the world of disabled children. "I feel like God used that to teach us the value of every human being," Mrs. Clark said.
Devout Christians, the Clarks started to adopt disabled Chinese children. In addition to Annie, the Clarks adopted sons Travis and Talbot, 10, and Tyler, 18, all of whom are missing parts of their right forearm. They also have two other adopted daughters, Alyssa, 18, who also has Down syndrome, and Amelia, 4, who has an undiagnosed lesion on her leg.
The Clarks said while others might consider their family a burden, they consider their children to be blessings.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

I can't believe Planned Parenthood is wasting money on this ad. It's completely unpersuasive. An abortion clinic nurse practitioner isn't going to vote for prolife candidate because showing women their ultrasounds is "cruel" and women will get black eyes if they are given their ultrasound photo. The arguments against ultrasound legislation are getting weaker and weaker.

Kenneth L. Turner, 28, assaulted his ex-girlfriend at a home for three hours, at one point ordering her to lie on her back and stomping on her stomach with both feet, the charge said. He told her she didn't deserve the baby and that he was going to kill it, the complaint said.

The woman is two months pregnant. It's unclear whether her embryo suffered any permanent injuries.

Turner was charged with felony first-degree attempted murder of an unborn child and felony domestic assault. He has previous domestic assault convictions and two other violent felony convictions.

While admitting that aborted babies are "our children—even those we decide not to bring into the world," Faith Aloud cannot debunk the claim that abortion is murder. Faith Aloud's Web site states, "When you hear something over and over, like ‘abortion is murder', it can get into your head—like a commercial. But if you really believed that abortion was the same as murder you probably wouldn't even be considering it."

All Planned Parenthood and Faith Aloud can do is rationalize the taking of another human's life under the guise of prayer.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Megan Carpentier is a little behind the times on this one. Wasn't this news like a month ago? Anyways, she decides to get a transvaginal ultrasound at an abortion clinic in Ohio and then report on it.

The most notable item about the whole story is the "green" abortion clinic in Ohio where Carpentier went requires transvaginal ultrasounds at certain gestational periods even though Ohio doesn't have a law requiring ultrasounds.

Notably, Preterm has a policy of performing ultrasounds on all patients seeking abortion, though Ohio law does not yet require it. For medical reasons, they use ultrasound to confirm pregnancies (in case of false positives), rule out ectopic pregnancies and physically locate the gestational sac in order to perform better, safer abortions. Patients that do not wish to undergo a transvaginal ultrasounds early in their pregnancies can opt to return at a slightly later date, when they are far enough along (though not too far along for a first trimester abortion) to be able to visualize something on the ultrasound.

The whole controversy on this issue is so fabricated. For obvious medical reasons, abortion clinics do ultrasounds. When abortion clinics don't do ultrasounds it's probably because they're shady clinics who don't care if women are actually pregnant and don't care about the possibility/dangers of ectopic pregnancies. Since shady abortion clinics don't have a governing body which regulates them, it makes sense for the government to regulate them.

Under the proposal, local public health departments get the top funding priority, followed by federally qualified community health centers, private primary-care centers and, last, Planned Parenthood and other stand-alone family planning centers.

"We refer to it as defunding Planned Parenthood because a lot of the money, in fact, will go to the top three (categories), but it doesn't preclude Planned Parenthood at the end of the day from receiving money," said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life.

Protesters gathered on Tuesday to try and reason with GAP members, asking that they at least take into consideration the emotional health of students, but they refused to stop displaying these images. This showed that they don't actually want to have an informed, civil discussion, but rather want to traumatize people who may have had abortions or might be facing such a decision.

Trying to prevent a prolife group from setting up a display using force proves the prolife group doesn't want to have a civil discussion?

The shirts were for sale on University of North Carolina Wilmington's campus Monday in connection with a panel discussion about abortion and Jennifer Baumgardner's book signing. The author and abortion rights advocate started making the shirts in 2004, to encourage people to speak about their experiences. The sales sparked other students to rally with their own shirts, saying things like "I haven't killed a baby."

Apparently, Politico has no understanding of what an apology is. From Sarah Silverman, this clearly isn't one.

In her apology, Silverman tweeted:"It wasn't funny for me to talk so casually about abortion. But when they take our right to choose away it will be HILARIOUS!" And: "The government should STAY OUT of our PRIVATE LIVES except when it comes to who we marry & what we do w our uteruses!!"

Vanessa Williams said this about her abortion in an interview with a Fox affiliate:

Who knows how life would have been different? I think the bottom line is I definitely would have been where I am now even if I'd gone down another path. It doesn't take away from the drive or the talent. You can make your life whatever you want with or without a child.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Vanessa Williams, now a mother of four, said she first got pregnant when she was in high school but decided to have an abortion -- another secret she kept from her mother.

"Being pregnant is the most frightening thing that happens in your life," she said. "I knew in high school that's something that I was not prepared to do, or fight, or struggle with."

Mississippi's governor has signed the bill to tighten abortion regulations. Abortion advocates claim the legislation could put the state's lone abortion clinic out of business since two of their three abortionists don't have admitting privileges.

The clinic's owner, Diane Derzis, said in a telephone interview this month that all her doctors are obstetrician-gynecologists, but only one has admitting privileges at an area hospital. She vowed to fight to remain open.

The Irish Times has a piece on four women who aborted children with genetic abnormalities or a condition where the child would die shortly after birth. The women refer to their aborted children as babies throughout the piece but there really aren't any quotes for why they had abortions instead of bringing the children to birth.

"Having to walk around Birmingham for five hours when you've just ended your baby's life, you've had an anaesthetic and are bleeding and cramping . . . I believe in a loving, caring, understanding God and that I won't be damned for what I did.....

Monday, April 16, 2012

On a Saturday morning in the spring of 1987, Pamela McGee sat on the shore at Dockweiler State Beach in Los Angeles, 72 hours from a scheduled abortion. "Do you want to be pregnant?" the counselor at the clinic had asked her. "No," McGee replied. She was a single, 24-year-old professional basketball player, and she could not take maternity leave. And even if she could, she couldn't imagine hauling an infant to Italy and parking the stroller next to the bench. But as McGee looked out over the Pacific, she began to reconsider. "I prayed and prayed and prayed and felt like I heard a voice from God," McGee says. "He was telling me, 'This is your gift.' " The next day she went to Faithful Central Bible Church in Inglewood, and the pastor delivered a sermon about not aborting one's blessings. O.K., God, McGee thought. You don't have to beat it into my head. She called the clinic to cancel, and on Jan. 19, 1988, gave birth to a boy with physical abilities that would border on the supernatural.

There's only one little problem with Heineman's strategy. Planned Parenthood doesn't provide prenatal care in any of its Nebraska clinics.

So then Planned Parenthood in Nebraska doesn't provide any services for pregnant women except abortion, correct?

The New York Times has a piece by Susan Heath discussing her abortion in 1978. She fails to understand that her experience with abortion in 1978 would closely mirror someone's experience in 2012 if they were both having abortions in New York. As per usual, the actual abortion is completely glossed over. I found this bit interesting:

Two years later, I'm driving upstate by myself. I look down and think that if I hadn't had the abortion, there would be a baby seat next to me with a small child in it, resting comfortably, knowing it would always be safe because I was in charge. It might be a girl — I would have liked to have a daughter in the family mix.

But I'm not grieving over the absence; I don't have and never have had a single qualm about not bringing that child into the world. I know many women who have grieved greatly over the children they decided not to have, and I am thankful to have been spared that agonizing sadness of guilt and regret.

This seems rather common among some pro-choice post-abortive women. They say they have no regrets but then mention thinking about what would have been, the child they would have had, etc.

Your legacy as Governor of Michigan (2003-2011) was job creation and clean energy, but you are also staunchly pro-choice.

Maybe Mack should be forgiven because she lives in Seattle and was maybe completely unaware that the unemployment rate in Michigan went from 6.3% when Granholm took office in January 2003 to a high of 14.2% in August of 2009.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The department pulled the registration after it learned that Allentown Medical Services lost its lease at 2200 Hamilton St. Since registrations for abortion facilities are specific to a location, losing the lease broke the terms of the registration, the state said.

Additionally, Brigham and clinic officials showed a "chronic inability … to comply with the most fundamental statutory and regulatory requirements," Deputy Secretary for Quality Assurance Anna Marie Sossong wrote in a revocation letter.

The soon to be closed abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama will stay open until May 18th. A group of prolifers protested outside the clinic.

So why doesn't the state shut the clinic down sooner than May 18? Attorneys for the state health department say that date was reached in a settlement with the clinic. They say had the department gone through a full out administrative hearing procedure, which was originally planned, it would have been at least June before the clinic would have had to close its doors.

At one point in the video, it appears that the abortion clinic turns it's sprinklers on the prolifers.

Speaking of the Birmingham clinic, Slate's Irin Carmon is playing defense the best she can. Not until the second to last paragraph does Carmon provide the reasoning for the clinic's coming closure.

New Woman All Women's most recent troubles started when Derzis called 911 on Jan. 21 because two women had accidentally been given 10 times the intended dosage of the drug Vasopressin. The protesters outside – whom Derzis had repeatedly battled in court – said they photographed the women getting into the ambulance and filed a complaint with the Department of Public Health. According to the subsequent report, "the registered nurse that made the medication error has had disciplinary action taken against her by the clinic. Medical records and interviews with clinical staff at the clinic did not indicate the patients were in immediate danger." But the subsequent investigation produced a 76-page report, which mostly details violations of documentation — such as failing to have clear job descriptions for various employees and adequate orientation procedures — and legibility of records. Other findings were more serious, such as a chart being signed off by a nurse who wasn't present in the clinic on that day and failure to document the monitoring of a patient who was given Pitocin. All added up to the surrender of the clinic's license, rather than go through protracted negotiations.

It's amazing how far abortion advocates will go to defend obviously below standard abortion clinic. To treat "failing to have adequate orientation procedures" aka "employees weren't properly trained to do their jobs" as if it is some minor detail is ridiculous.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Police arrested her 25-year-old father, Umar Farooq, who relatives alleged tortured the child as he was upset at having a daughter instead of a son.

Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas are suing in an attempt to get funds via the Women's Health Program.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Austin, asks the court to file a preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of a rule that Texas legislators approved in 2005, denying participation in the program to any clinic affiliated with an abortion provider.

The proposal increases the current requirement that an ultrasound be performed before an abortion from one hour to 24 hours before. It also requires abortion clinics to post signs providing notice that it's illegal for anyone to coerce a woman to have an abortion.

In wording similar to that in the laws of other states with 20-week bans, the Arizona legislation specifies that the state's ban would start from a point "as determined with reasonable probability by the attending physician."

The Medical Board of Australia is pursuing professional misconduct action against Brisbane doctor Adrienne Freeman after she posted advice online explaining how women could have abortions without medical supervision.

The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal's deputy president Judge Fleur Kingham said in a judgement published this week that Dr Freeman's disciplinary hearing had to be adjourned because she made an attempt to lead evidence while cross-examining an expert witness from the medical board.

Retta's lawyer, Jim Henderson, denies in court documents that Retta blocked the woman from entering the clinic. She had approached Retta for help, he wrote, and volunteers were leading her into the clinic against her wishes. He said Retta didn't shout or yell but said to the woman, "don't let them force you to have an abortion," a statement protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Kenneth Lamb of Wilder was sentenced Monday by 3rd District Judge Molly J. Huskey to 15 to 30 years in prison on felony convictions of lewd conduct with a minor child and conspiracy to escape from jail. He pleaded guilty in January.

In India, a woman is struggling to survive after being beaten by her husband and in-laws who were attempting to kill her unborn child because they thought the child was a girl. The woman had two previous abortions which were girls or assumed to be girls.

Police circle inspector Shaikh Usman said that the husband and in-laws of the victim, Munni, a resident of Balajipeta in Tenali town believed that she was pregnant with a girl child as a local Baba had predicted that only the 7th child in her womb will be a male. Husband hence allegedly beat up his wife that lead to miscarriage.

This was victim's sixth pregnancy and his husband and in-laws made her abort again and again because they didn't want the girl child.

As no local doctor was willing to abort the child for the third time due to her health condition, the family decided to do it themselves. Husband Allabaksh, father-in-law Rahman and mother-in-law Fathima tied her to a pole and beat her on the stomach under the impression it would lead to abortion.

The Huffington Post has a debate between Canadian MP Stephen Woodworth and Canadian abortion advocate Joyce Arthur regarding when or if the unborn should be recognized as human beings.

Arthur's piece shows how complacent abortion advocates in Canada have become. She starts by accusing Woodworth of begging the question by claiming he assumes the unborn are human beings as his premise when he has actually asked for a commission to study the medical evidence as to whether they are or aren't. Woodworth's piece also makes a number of arguments for why the unborn should be considered human beings. Arthur's piece admits the unborn are biologically human (hmmm.... isn't a biologically human organism a human being?) but then asserts they aren't persons. Here's her argument for personhood:

Personhood is a socially and legally constructed concept, and it is bestowed upon birth for very practical and obvious reasons.

Yup, that's it. No argument for "sentience" or "self-awareness" just an assertion that personhood is at birth and that's that.

Here's the core of Arthur's position:

It is impossible for two beings in the same body to exercise competing rights in any meaningful or just way. The biological or medical status of the fetus is irrelevant anyway, because women need abortions and always have.

Bingo. She doesn't care if the unborn are human beings or persons. Not one iota. Women "need" abortions and that's the end of the story. She starts with the position that women "need" abortions and everything else follows from there. There's no serious thought about what the unborn are, if they have value or rights and if they should be provided any type of protection.

Here's Arthur argument in a nutshell: Women need abortion so abortion should be legal. Abortion should be legal because women need abortion.

Monday, April 02, 2012

In possibly the weakest attack on ultrasound legislation so far, here's abortionist Pablo Rodriguez claiming showing a woman her ultrasound and describing parts of the child turns the ultrasound into a "torture machine." (my emphasis)

"All this bill does is turn the ultrasound into a torture machine," Rodriguez added. "You have to start turning the machine around and start describing every little part of the screen, which is hard to begin with and would serve no purpose other than to scare woman and make them change their minds. The result is to get the gestational age (of the fetus), that's why we do the ultrasound. It's not to be identifying parts of the fetus.

"For the most part, under 10 weeks, it is difficult," he added, "you have to have a knowledge of embryology and anatomy to even comprehend what you are seeing. To pretend that we can give women a course on ultrasound images in the 10 minutes it takes to do an ultrasound, it serves no purpose. It is an intrusion in the patient-physician relationship."

Police say someone placed the device on an outside windowsill. It later exploded causing damage to the building and a small fire that burned out before the fire department arrived.

Dr. Barry Starr admits there were unrealistic expectations behind Proposition 71 but he has a rather delusional assessment of the "success" of Proposition 71 after providing a highly misleading description of embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. pre-Prop. 71.

There was a real worry the U.S. would be left behind and that this would keep U.S. researchers away from the forefront of biological research for the first time in our history. It was a frustrating, scary time for scientists.

Of course it was an awful time for people suffering from awful incurable diseases too. They were worried that cures involving ES cells would not come in time for them unless research was done in a big way here in the U.S.

In swooped Proposition 71 to save the day. It provided 3 billion dollars of funding for ES cell research here in California. At a minimum it provided stopgap funding to keep ES cell research alive and well here in the U.S. until President Obama re-opened the spigots again in 2009.

Even if this is all Proposition 71 accomplished, I would argue it was worth it. Eventual cures using these cells are 5-6 years closer than they would be without the money spent by California voters. This is a big deal to patients suffering from all those life threatening diseases we always hear about.

A stop gap? At minimum? Did the citizens of California really want to spend $6 billion (with a B) on a stop gap?